Kinesthetic Learners
by Lomonaaeren
Summary: HPDM preslash. A moment during a Quidditch game. COMPLETE.


**Title: **Kinesthetic Learners

**Disclaimer: **J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.

**Pairings: **Harry/Draco preslash

**Rating: **PG-13

**Warnings:** Hogwarts "eighth year" fic, profanity, innuendo.

**Wordcount: ** 1200

**Summary: **A brief moment shared during a Quidditch game.

**Author's Notes: **This is a scene that might become the prelude to a longer series of fics, or might not.

**Kinesthetic Learners**

Harry squinted against the wind that was cutting into his eyes. He would see the Snitch soon, he knew, despite the splotches of heat that drifted across his glasses, despite the pain that pinched his thighs where they clutched the broom shaft, despite the presence of the annoying git beside him—

"Did the She-Weasel break up with you because you needed something big and _hard _between your legs, Potty?"

Harry gritted his teeth and spiraled hard to the left. Malfoy followed, of course. He had no choice. They both knew—Harry had looked across the Great Hall that morning and seen the knowledge echoed silently on Malfoy's face—that Harry was the better player. Malfoy had to watch and imitate him to have the slightest chance of success. He would never spot the Snitch on his own.

Beneath them, the Beaters and Chasers dashed back and forth in motions that had long ago become pointless to Harry. He knew that Gryffindor and Slytherin were close enough now that whoever caught the Snitch would win the game for his team. There was no reason to think about them except to keep the modicum of awareness in place that would allow him to avoid a Bludger if the Slytherin Beaters swatted one at him.

"I heard about it, you know."

Harry glared at Malfoy before he reminded himself that he wasn't paying attention to the git. Once again, he scanned the sky through the light rain falling. He saw a flash of gold and nearly accelerated, but it was only a bit of sunlight working under the clouds. Harry relaxed back against his new Firebolt with a sigh.

Malfoy swerved towards him. Harry tensed, wondering if the idiot had managed to spot the Snitch after all—hovering near Harry's hair, of course, because it would come near him before it would offer itself to that prat Malfoy any day—

And then Malfoy was beside him, looming close, reaching out to catch the shaft of the Firebolt with a confident hand. Harry spluttered and reared backwards, nearly falling off the broom before he caught himself. That should have been enough to make Malfoy let go, but he seemed oblivious to the danger, letting himself be tugged along. His eyes were bright, his mouth determined.

Harry stopped, hovering, and found himself pressed leg-to-leg with Malfoy, Malfoy leaning so close that his hair brushed Harry's cheek. Harry grimaced and raised a hand to swat at it. Malfoy laughed at him, and his breath was sour and warm on Harry's lips, like spoiled milk.

"You don't understand," Malfoy whispered. "I know that you were looking at cocks and arses while you were with _her_." He spat the word with force that Harry didn't understand. He was Malfoy's rival, not Ginny. "I know what you really want. I know what you really need. And it's not _her_."

His hand lifted off the broom. Harry huffed in relief and started to steer away, careful to avoid Malfoy. All he needed now was to brush him and have Malfoy claim that he had cheated.

Malfoy's hand landed on his groin instead.

Everything froze. Harry thought even the drops of rain falling past them had paused. All he could do was sit there, feeling his heart hammer in his crotch beneath Mafoy's tense, still fingers, his blood buzzing in his ears, his breath escaping him in shallow pants.

"I told you," Malfoy said, and his voice was hushed, reverent. "I told you that I knew. I know you more than you know yourself, really." His fingers smoothed their way across Harry's robes, heading for his hipbone.

Harry reached out. His motion was clear in his head. He knew how he finished it. He knew that he knocked Malfoy's arm away, stinging the other boy with his slap, and then reached up and back and wrenched his broom free.

But his hand didn't obey the vision in his head, and landed on Malfoy's leg instead.

Malfoy lowered his eyelids. The lashes trembled, and Harry could see them, bright and blond through the falling rain. His mouth watered. He had no idea what he was thinking, doing, or about to do. Visions flashed through his mind like scattered birds and then vanished. He leaned forwards, his lips parting.

Malfoy reached past him and scooped the Snitch out of the air from where it had rested behind Harry's back.

His fingers curled on the way and rasped Harry's arse, nails scraping and fingers expanding at the last moment, so that Harry felt a fleeting touch that overwhelmed him almost more than the knowledge that Malfoy had won the game.

Almost.

"Fuck you, Malfoy," Harry snapped, and this time his hand obeyed him and snapped back, away. Malfoy, hovering, stared at him as if he didn't understand the insult. Harry imitated his sneer and his voice. "_I know you more than you know yourself._ Really. You know how to win and cheat. Bloody fucking congratulations." He wheeled his broom and flew towards the ground. From the noise, their other teammates and the people in the stands were just beginning to understand that Slytherin had won.

Malfoy arrowed up and fell into line beside him. Harry expected him to shoot past in the next moment, trailing smug laughter. Instead, Malfoy turned his broom across Harry's path. Harry had no choice but to pull up and hold there. He tried to make his glare as poisonous as possible.

"I'm a Slytherin," Malfoy said. His voice was shadowed, his tone utterly neutral.

"Yeah, I know," Harry said. "Cheater."

"Not this time," Malfoy whispered. "I promise. I was—I saw the Snitch. I had to take it. That's just the way I am. But I meant the rest of what I said. This is the way I've learned how to express it, to show what I want."

Again his hand shot out. Harry swerved to avoid it, but it still brushed his kneecap with a strange sensation, a grating of skin against cloth that shouldn't have mattered as much as it did.

But it did. Which just made Malfoy's betrayal all the more stinging, Harry told himself, and his own stupidity more galling. He had let himself believe, for one second, in the shit Malfoy was spouting, and thought about the dreams he had sometimes, fading before he woke, and the fact that he had broken up with Ginny because there was something wrong there, although he couldn't define it.

His body knew before his head did. He had always been quicker to learn things that involved the body, Harry thought, the muscles and the hands.

The mouth and the eyes, too, maybe.

He soared back down through the chill air, and he remade himself into a true Gryffindor on the way, one who cared more about the loss of this game than anything else.

But his eyes lingered on Malfoy's back as he was embraced by his fellow Slytherins, and his hands thought of the movements he had learned.

He would, perhaps, return the lesson.

**The End**


End file.
